Patterns of union formation among urban minority youth in the United States

Since 1990, several large surveys of sexual behavior have been conducted. I II addition to collecting general information on sexual histol-ies, such as number of partners in the previous rear and whether subjects ever used con doms, these studies collected information on sexual behavior with specific partners, or "partnerships." The data are useful both for testing of substa ntive hypotheses about the determinants of behavior as well as for disease transition modeling. The objective of this paper is to use partnership hist ories to describe the union formation patterns of low-income youth living i ll Detroit. Data from the partnership histories will be used to illustrate the types of statistics that can be generated from these histories. Data, w ill be presented on the number and types of unions (married/cohabiting, "kn ew well," "casual"), the frequency and duration of these unions, the types of intercourse reported in each type of union, the patterns of mixing by ag e and ethnic group bz each type of union, concurrency in unions, and condom use in unions.